The death of a scooter-riding drug suspect who crashed after an undercover NYPD sergeant in the Bronx threw a cooler at him has been ruled a homicide, officials said Friday.
30-year-old Eric Duprey, died from “blunt force injuries of the head,” which he sustained while fleeing a drug bust on Aqueduct Avenue near West 190th Street in Kingsbridge Heights on Wednesday.
Duprey erratically sped away during a buy-and-bust operation conducted by sergeant Erik Duran. Duran chucked a cooler at Duprey, striking him in the head from close range; after being hit, Duprey lost control and crashed into a parked car.
He suffered trauma to his body and was pronounced dead by EMS workers at the site of the crash. Duran has been suspended without pay.
Police said Duprey was running from cops, but Durpey’s mother Gretchen Soto said that was a lie.
“He wasn’t fleeing. He wasn’t fleeing. He was just on the motorcycle talking to me on the video chat. And he passed by that place when all of a sudden the call cut out,” Gretchen Soto told The Associated Press in Spanish.
Duprey, a father of three children under the age of 10, worked with the city’s Parks Department before taking a job as an Uber Eats driver.
